Helpless: Mother loses 25-year-old son to heroin, hopes others can get help

Jennifer's mother thought the two, single mother and autistic son, needed a puppy to balance things out. When her friend's dogs had puppies, she brought her over. Mark, an intense gamer and a bit of a geek, named her Rukia, after a character in a Japanese anime. Rukia rewarded him at times by chewing up one of his expensive game controllers after he brought it home, eager to try it out.

Mark's no longer there. The house is quieter, and though Jennifer tries, it's sadder, too. Day by day, Jennifer said.

"I think she's more concerned about me," Jennifer said while scratching Rukia's eager head. "But I know she misses him too."

“He was my inspiration to be better.

— Jennifer Scott, Mark’s mother

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Mark died last month, on Dec. 14, from a heroin overdose. He was 25. Jennifer never got the help she knew Mark needed and she believes wanted. She wants to change that for other mothers like her.

Mark had Asperger Syndrome, or at least he was on the spectrum. He was a happy kid, though, and Jennifer fought through the autistic tendencies by hugging him constantly. She was, she said with a grin, always about feelings. She made him a sweet, sensitive kid. She called him her best friend.

Yet after a car crash on a snowy road, he got a head injury, and he wasn't the same person. He was still Mark, but a darker version of him. He became depressed and had anxiety. His decision to try heroin leaves her flabbergasted, but it also makes sense.

"I don't know what he was medicating," Jennifer said. "But maybe that was a way to feel good."

Mark had tried pot and ecstasy, but he was not a partier, Jennifer said. He got up early on Saturday mornings to bowl, the only sport besides snowboarding that clicked with him.

Sure, there were warning signs. Addiction ran on both sides of his family. Jennifer at one point struggled with that herself, mostly from alcohol. But she never considered him an "at-risk" kid. After he turned 21, without any issues, she thought she was golden, she said.

"He was my inspiration to be better," she said.

The car crash happened that same year.

How could you just try heroin? She still wonders. Back in her day, long ago, while she chased the dragon, even she just knew to avoid something like that. But things have changed. It's possible more people are hooked on heroin in Greeley than ever before, according to recent reports. It's cheaper and similar to some pain medications, so it seems safer.

She didn't know he was using heroin until she hugged him one day and a needle poked her thigh.

That sparked her long, frustrating and ultimately helpless battle with the drug. There always seemed to be a hurdle to getting Mark some help.

Addiction is a hard thing to treat. It can take many times before the user beats it. When Mark saw his family doctor about an arm infection from the needles, he could treat that, but the doctor couldn't do much else.

Jennifer drove him all over the Denver area for evaluations. When their insurance finally agreed to pay for treatment, Mark got 19 days in a facility in Parker. Jennifer knew from her own struggles that 19 days was a start, not an effective way to treat an addiction. Mark overdosed on heroin for the first time six days after getting out.

"I knew he didn't want to live the way he was living," Jennifer said. "He knew he was losing himself."

It is possible Jennifer could have found help had she paid for it, but she was a single mom who rightfully considered her own place, a duplex in a tough part of Evans, a victory. She wasn't rich, and she'd had some bad luck, such as a house fire six years ago that destroyed everything she owned. She'd give up a kidney for him, she said, but that wouldn't treat the disease.

Instead, she asked questions. She asked Mark's friends what kept them going back to heroin? The pain, they answered. They weren't specific enough. Her brother worked in the ER department at North Colorado Medical Center, and he saw plenty of overdoses. Why couldn't they automatically admit addicts to a facility? That's not how it worked.

She tried tough love. She kicked him out, and then he was on the street one day holding a sign for money. She was reduced to moving him back in three weeks before he died, so she could go home for lunch to check on him. She hoped, as a nurse, she would be able to fix him, or at least watch out for him when something when wrong.

She had some hope. She had an appointment with another place, and maybe things would be different. He had a court date, and she figured because he didn't have money, they would lock him up.

That hope was not naïve. She keeps a note framed on her living room table, something Mark wrote to her for Mother's Day in 2015. She had just gotten her place in Evans, and they were living together, and he had a job at Xerox.

"Things are starting to look up again," Mark said in a lyrical letter to her hard work to make it happen.

A year later, on Dec. 14, he went to hug her again. She often frisked him, but she didn't that night, something she dearly regrets. She went to bed. When she woke up, she found him on his bed, cold and unresponsive. She doesn't remember much about what happened next. She called for help. She didn't think she could revive him. She thinks she was outside screaming. Now she wishes she had just held him.

"I'm a nurse. I know what dead people look like," she said, "and I just knew, but I couldn't deal with it."

The authorities said the overdose was accidental. Jennifer believes them. But Jennifer also believes Mark didn't think he would live long. He told his friends he expected to die young. He expected his addiction to kill him.

She's left with a birthday party she held for him a couple weeks ago, and many of his friends, racked with guilt, found the courage to go, something she appreciated. She asked them to reach out to her if they needed help. She hopes they do. She's willing to go to schools to talk about Mark. She has a lot of ideas, but it's a complicated problem.

She's left with a shrine to him, full of photos she printed from Facebook because the fire took the rest, and she's left with his room, where she goes to talk to him, and his dog, who will jump on the bed with her. They lay there, in a ball, and she always says the same thing first.

I miss you, she says.

— Staff writer Dan England is The Tribune's Features Editor. His column runs on Tuesday. If you have an idea for a column, call (970) 392-4418 or e-mail dengland@greeleytribune.com. Follow him on Twitter @ DanEngland.